Tickets are still available for this Dublin Derby. Buy here. The match will be shown live on RTE2. Kickoff is at 5pm

t was a tough night for Rovers in Norway. How do you look back on the team’s performance?

“We approached the game a slightly different way and we knew that we would give up some amount of possession and territory with that, but we’re really frustrated with the goals we gave away. The second comes from a deflection and the third comes off the bar and lands for them but they were poor goals, and it was more the timing of the goals that were really annoying.”

They showed what a good team they are and we were really on the back foot, especially in the first half when it could have been more than 1-0?

“I think they’re the best team in the group and you saw signs of that on Thursday night. They’re a team that have been building for some time and you can see the evidence of that. They’re a very good team and they’re winning a league that has some very good teams in it. They’ve been fortunate to be able to fully focus on the Conference games, which is something they can do, and you saw that on Thursday.”

Alan Mannus made some really good saves but you spoke about the bad timing of the goals. Was the plan to keep it tight until later in the second half but then the second goal so early was really unfortunate from our point of view?

“I felt at 1-0, because they’d missed a couple of chances, we’re still in the game. When you get to midway through the second half, you’re happy, especially when you know what we could have introduced off the bench. So, the timing of the second goal was really unfortunate.”

How good was it to get Pico Lopes on the pitch but on the flip side, how is Aidomo doing after his ankle injury?

“Aidomo looks like he’s going to struggle. You always run the risk on those pitches of doing something that Aidomo has done, and it looks like he’s gone over really badly on his ankle, which is unfortunate. We don’t know the full extent of it at the moment. It was great to get Pico back on the pitch. He’s been around the group the last couple of weeks now, so it was great to those minutes under his belt and thankfully he came through it with no issues.”

Are Sean Gannon, Chris McCann and Richie Towell available?

“All should be OK for Sunday. We didn’t want to take any risks on Thursday night with any of them. Simon Power is probably another 10 days away.”

It wasn’t an easy place to get to on Thursday, but we had a loud and proud travelling support, and we’ll need them again on Sunday?

“We’ll need it more so on Sunday and the rest of the campaign. They’re really important games in the run-in now and we know we’ve got to be at our best in those games to get maximum points. All the games are very important so we’re going to need all their support, which has been fantastic all year, home and away, so we’re really going to need them on Sunday to help us get the result.”

It was a 0-0 draw with Shelbourne recently but they had an eight-goal thriller with St Pat’s last week. What sort of opposition will they be in Tallaght?

“I’m not sure how they’ll come and approach it, but we’ve got to focus on what we do. We obviously didn’t do enough to get the win in Tolka recently, so we know that we must be better than that if we want to go and win the game. Regardless of what way Shels approach the game, we’ve got to focus on ourselves and bring our level of performance that we did in Sligo.”